"There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the thousandfold Relief Societies; -- though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold."
I chose this disgustingly long quotation partly because I don't fully understand what he means, and partly because it closes the passage I thought was the sickest. In the preceding passage there are pithier statements: "A man is to carry himself as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he"; "The doctrine of hatred must be preached...." statements which I found despicable and arrogant.
Although I must agree on a superficial level that personal strength and confidence are good things, even necessary to "genius" as he claims, my humanistic sentiment cannot accept his nihilistic attitude towards everything that is not from himself. I'm sorry, but giving to charity is good, it's the best we can do. And abolitionists aren't bad people. I hope I'm not misreading the essay completely, I'm sure I must have some misinterpretations, but I still disliked the gerneral tone. He even goes so far to say that the truth is subjective, and that what HE percieves is fact.
The part I don't understand is the what his "class of persons" is. Presumably, by extention, what ANYONE percieves is fact, but he never really bothers to go there, and doesn't let the rest of humanity play by his rules. He claims consanguinity with all other men, but then sets them at an inferior level.
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Yeah, R. Waldo's views on philanthropy are a bit cringe-inducing. I think he was hoping to be inspirational with it-- we all have the capacity to be self-sufficient and so on-- but it comes across like the kneejerk argument against welfare: if we give those poor people the money, they'll never have the incentive to work hard.
ReplyDeleteI think you raised a good point in class today that a lot of the Transcendentalists' freedoms were bought by their relative privilege.